Rewrite and re-release of the first six Young Ancient books.

[PS Power]

I finished the builder, which had about 70% of the lines changed. It reads far more smoothly, the non-speaking questions are largely gone. (There might be one left. Maybe two... Out of hundreds of them. Well, I was young, what can I say?)

The "cute" statements in text are gone. Sigh. (Like that.)

Beginning and ending scenes are getting overhauled. (Though the data points are staying the same.)
There is added foreshadowing and slightly deeper character development for several side characters.

Of course, there will be fewer typos, hopefully none. The formating is better and there will be new covers for several of the books. (If not all.)

There will also be a new 1-6 book set. (Or possibly two shorter ones? the books are each getting longer and Amazon already doesn't love me for the length of that set as it is.)
'I should be done in about two weeks, or less.

Then the plan is to beg for reviews on it, as I re-release all of them, the first six books, at one time. The old copies will go away then.

If anyone has questions, comments, or advise for this, let me know? Everything is changing, but you won't be lost if you don't read them.

I've been meaning to make them smoother and more professional for years, and decided to take the time now.

Fingers crossed.

Ideas, anyone?

[qHnED7SnYgQs]

And I just started re-reading all the YA books last week (up to #15 Strange Land).

While reading, I quoted short (1-2 paragraph) sections that I found especially funny. Looking at them now, all of them specifically contain "non-speaking questions" and "cute" statements. I'm going to miss them. But I guess it might be something that people object to, though personally I liked that part of your writing style.

I did notice a fair amount of typos and grammar issues, so that definitely needs fixing.

Re-reading these books (for the 5th time now for the earlier ones) it's very interesting to see how strongly the described events are filtered through the perception of the main character. Also that reading the book while knowing everything that comes out in future books is a very different experience then reading it for the first time. All the things that made you go "WT...? Why on (what planet are we on anyway?) would anyone behave like that?", turn into "well, that makes so much sense."

Now, one idea I've been sitting on for a few days and was going to suggest is that you add some value to your boxed set by adding a new short story after each book, set in the same time frame as the book, that shows, from the POV of one of the side characters, either: some scene in the book where the perception of events of the side character is markedly different, something that happened to the side character "off camera" but was later mentioned in the book, or something that happened to the side character during longer "off camera" times, but which, while relevant to that side character, isn't something that the main character would have become aware of.

The idea here is to make sure the short story on it's own is interesting enough for people that have previously read the book to want to read it, even if a "now fully proofread and re-edited!" sticker on it's own does not.

[qHnED7SnYgQs]

Oh, one more point, not in the first book IIRC, but later ones of the first 6, I noticed that some of the sex scenes where more detailed and explicit than I remembered. Not that I personally mind, I like your Nicole Lawson books, but I think these might scare some people away without at the same time adding enough value to attract others. And I found that later books are much more subdued in that regard, which makes theses first books not a good representation of what to expect in later books.

[MarciaA]

Well, I need to “proofread” these new versions to get the reviews ready.
‘sly grin’

Yes of course I will have reviews ready. Might just go copy/paste my current ones of each and save them and tweak as needed.

[PS Power]

Yes on the proof reading for those. (Really, anyone can get a copy of these, if they want. I have The Builder ready right now)

On the sex scenes... Those are going to be toned way down. To many people didn't like the level they took. (Hence being toned down, later...) It's already in the plans.

I'll send you that first book, Marcia. (Anyone else who wants to see it as well. There are probably typos and such, after all.)

Thanks!

[qHnED7SnYgQs]

In that case, you may want to also consider some alternative way of communicating the resolution of the rebellion from Countess of Desire to readers that don't want to read it...

[PS Power]

That would be later, down the line. Though, you don't really need that story to understand the idea, I don't think.


*In that it IS covered in later stories, so you can have an explanation without it. That was already done on purpose.

**I'll look at the idea though. I probably won't write a new book for it, however.

Still, if it seems needed, I'll find some way to address that.

[qHnED7SnYgQs]

I realize that this is going to be quite a bit further down the line, but I'm just in the process of re-reading all the YA books (and after that plan to continue with all other multiverse connected books). I just finished "Countess of Desire" and started on "Linage" (25% in so far), and this book contains only 3 mentions of "rebellion":

The last rebellion might be over...

The rebellion has been over for years now, but...

The rebellion ended seven years ago...

No further information is given around these mentions about how, what, why that got resolved. (Nor anywhere else in the first 25% of the book that I've read so far.)

Given that the rebellion had been a major plot thread ongoing for 8 or 9 books before that (not counting "Countess of Desire"), and having it simply dismissed as "that's no longer important, it's over" without any explanation (if you haven't read "Countess of Desire") is a bit of a slap in the face really.

[Gary F. York]

[PS Power]

I'll go over the Rebellion portion of things, but to me it felt as I presented it. (This might take some time.) The rebellion was largely broken up by the Gray Plague and the fact that the aid for that came from Tor, who is known to be on the King's side.

There were some last gasps, but that one factor was what really did it. that and the fact that the rebellion kept losing every fight they were in.

*This didn't make the people, or their reason for their actions/words go away. Such things seldom really do, in life.

As to what Gary said:

A lot of my earlier work needs to be reinvigorated. That 70% doesn't mean that each line had a 70% change, but that about 70% of all lines have some kind of change in them. A big one is has to do with questions being posed (yes, to my mind as ruminations of the main character) which apparently bothered a lot of people.

Also typos, editing mistakes and what people perceived as "missing words" which were things that I largely thought of as being a linguistic tick at the time, to show that things were taking place in a different language... (Again, a lot of people either didn't get that, or did and it really bothered them!)

As for the "cute" things, such as...

Sigh.

Arrrgh.

And so on, many people think of using that kind of thing as being a very amateurish thing to do. The stories themselves aren't being changed in meaning, though at times the tone is shifting...

Also, while i'm not doing this 100% many of the scenes where Tor doesn't speak in a normal fashion, just summarizing what is going on for his part, are being turned into normal dialog.

For instance...

Tor asked if anyone there knew if lightening was electricity. About half the people in the room laughed at him, finally, almost as if taking pity on him, Petra explained that it was.

Could be changed to:

Tor listened to the wind of the storm outside. Suddenly there was a crash of thunder, that caused him to jump, even if he was safely inside the thick stone walls of the castle. A sense of something familiar washed over him. A thing he was barely aware of. It was a field, much like light was.

"Say... Is lightning electricity?"

Several of the people in the room nodded. There was a bit of chuckling as well. Probably meaning that he'd missed something basic again.

Petra however, being a bit kinder than the others, actually bothered to explain.

"That's right. It's a large amount of it, moving all at once."

...

*Now, I just made up both things above, riffing off of a similar scene. The point is that there is a stylistic difference between the two things.

So, the books get a written overhaul, new names (Which so far are going to be an indication of the series being overhauled such as "Young Ancients: The revised Edition" Or something like that. Then the dropping of the word "The" for most or all of the titles. "The builder" becomes "Builder" and so on.

Everything gets a new cover (for the first six and the 1-6 multipack)

And so on.

For years it's seemed that the older books were holding me back. I worked on new things, but the truth is, on a large series, people WANT to start on number one...

Having reviews that mention loads of typos, poor style and all that can't have aided in getting people interested.

Will doing this increase interest in the various works? I have no idea. I DO know that I've resisted certain things that would have potentially helped get the word out, over time, due to feelings of my early work, what people see first, not being good enough...

So, that's where I am on this right now.

****

I enjoy doing new things, of course. but I have over a hundred books, all of which should be doing about ten to twenty times better, even if I never touched a keyboard again... That really is the trend for most authors, even ones who's work isn't as good as what I put out and have been for years...

So, I've identified this, the quality and reviews, on the earlier books, as something to address. Since I refuse to do the fake review thing that many Indie and Big five books have going on (from their own admission, at times) that means making big changes, doing better and trying to get new reviews that will, hopefully tempt more people to give my works a chance.

Hopefully things will also be more fun/easier to read as well.